CUET row: NTA reschedules exam date for J&K

Following the outrage over change in examination centre for CUET exams, National Testing Agency (NTA) yesterday rescheduled the exams.

The official said that the exams will commence from May-26 onwards instead of May-21 in Jammu and Kashmir.

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Senior Director Exams for NTA, Sadhana Parashar said, “Being sensitive to the needs of candidates and to facilitate the students of Jammu and Kashmir, the NTA is exploring the possibility of creating temporary centers in Kashmir.”

“It has been decided that the CUET (UG) – 2023 will now be conducted from 26 May 2023 onwards in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir,” Parashar said.

The official said that it has been decided that the CUET (UG) – 2023 examination scheduled for 21 to 25 May 2023 is cancelled in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.

This is a phenomenal increase in the number of registered candidates as per the last year.

Earlier, NTA on Friday clarified that it is exploring the possibility of creating a temporary centre in Srinagar to conduct CUET exams in order to bring back most of the candidates here.

NTA in a statement has said that in Jammu and Kashmir, a total of 87,309 unique candidates have been registered from the UT for the UG CUET 2023.

“For May-21, 22, 23, and 24, a total of 18,012 candidates will be appearing in 12 centers in Jammu and Kashmir, including three in Jammu, five in Srinagar, two in Baramulla, one each in Samba and Pulwama,” reads the previous statement of NTA.

It also said that on May-25, 26, 27 and 28, a total of 44,425 candidates will be appearing in 15 centres created in Jammu and Kashmir. Some candidates have been moved out of the erstwhile state.

“However, being sensitive to the needs of candidates and to ease the access of the students of Jammu and Kashmir, the NTA is exploring the possibility of creating a temporary centre in Srinagar,” reads the NTA statement.

NTA has also said, “This will enable NTA to bring back most of the candidates to the state. However, the number of candidates being extremely large, and some candidates may still have to take the CUET (UG) outside the state.”

Pertinently, aspirants of Common University Entrance Test (CUET) had expressed antipathy for designating their examination centres outside the Jammu and Kashmir in contrary to their preferred venues.

The aspirants had said that their preferred examination centers for the entrance test were changed from Kashmir to outside Valley by the examination conducting agency NTA.

The aggrieved aspirants had further informed that in the previous entrance examination, hundreds of aspirants from Kashmir couldn’t reach their respective examination centres which were designated outside the Valley.